03.06.10

I’ll be traveling outside the United States for the Mozilla Summit, and I have a couple other distant vacation ideas which might involve leaving the country. When you spend overseas, you spend the local country’s currency, not your home country’s currency, exchanging one for the other when needed. The common wisdom seems to be that the most efficient and generally least expensive way to exchange currency for spending (when possible) is through a credit card. Most credit cards impose a “foreign transaction fee” on such transactions: a few percent, usually. I’m aware of one credit card that currently imposes no such fee: Capital One. (The Schwab Invest First Visa also charged no fee, according to reports, but that card’s been discontinued.) What other credit cards should I be aware of that charge no foreign currency fee? Does anyone have a recommendation for a good credit card primarily to be used for overseas purchases?

Most ideal would be if the card had no foreign transaction fee and no minimum usage requirements, but I can make some perfunctory use of it in order to avoid fees if necessary.